Ranking My Sci-Fi Games

16. Star Wars: Destiny

I don’t dislike Star Wars: Destiny, I just find that I have room for one collectible game in my life. And right now that is Magic: The Gathering. Destiny is fun, though, because it is cheaper to play. And I know someone who has a bunch of cards (they bought all of mine) so I can play it if I want that way. But it’s a good head to head game.

15: Firefly: The Game

This is a game that I really need to give another chance. Again, I don’t dislike this game, it’s just that I kind of played it once. Everyone was learning and nothing was going that well for us in it. And it just got longer and longer without making progress. But I see how the game works and I think there are some cool elements there. And I know there are people who really like the game. So I want to try it again and set aside the time and group to really play it.

14: Legendary Encounters: Firefly

Much like Firefly: The Game, Legendary Encounters Firefly is one that I’ve had fun with, but I want to play more. I really like the show, and I think that the Encounters version of Legendary works better than the Marvel version. And it also falls into the category of I know someone who owns the game, so I could pretty easily play it again if I wanted.

13: Cosmic Encounter

Cosmic Encounter is one that I had in my collection, I really enjoyed, and I traded away. Mainly because I don’t think I can get it to the table all that often. Cosmic Encounter is a really silly negotiation game that works when people lean into that negotiation. There is strategy to the game, but you need to lean into that negotiation to make it work. So it just limits who I can play it with, but I’d never turn down a chance to play Cosmic Encounter.

12: Cry Havoc

Cry Havoc was high on my Top 100 a few years ago, and it dropped down and I sold it. Again, a game that I really enjoy and I would play any chance I could. But it’s an asymmetric game so it is a bit harder to teach and play. With that, I prefer Root to it which is in the same family of asymmetric games. But this is a fun area control game with a cool combat mechanic that is simple but different.

11: Star Wars: Imperial Assault

More Star Wars on the list. Imperial Assault also left the collection only because it is a campaign game. Campaign games are harder to get to the table for sure and Imperial Assault is not exception. I want to get it back sometime and play it. I liked the app that you can use with it to play fully cooperatively. And I like that it feels like a Star Wars adventure.

10: Shadowrun Crossfire

I almost didn’t add this to the list, I don’t know where I want to put Cyber-Punk. But Cyber-Punk is Sci-fi. Shadowrun Crossfire is a game of deck building and defeating challenges, getting XP, and leveling up your characters slowly. That’s the big knock on the game that you don’t level up fast enough, but people house rule around that. It is one I need to dive more into the game, I think you can play it solo, even if it is multi-handed solo gaming.

9: Gravwell

Gravwell is an abstract game with a space theme put on top of it. In particular Gravwell has you getting passed through a wormhole that is closing and now you use different elements to try and escape back. But the different element either pull you towards the nearest object, push you from it, or pull them towards you. It’s a fun little puzzle that keeps it close until someone can get the right cards to make it to the end.

8: Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars in a box, as people like to call it. Star Wars: Rebellion has the Rebels trying to undermine the Empire and complete missions. The Empire is trying to figure out where the Rebels secret base is. All while building up troops and skirmishing as you go. It’s a massive two player game, but an amazing one. If you have the time it is worth sitting down with an getting that original trilogy Star Wars feel.

7: Under Falling Skies

Under Falling Skies is Space Invaders meets Independence Day. This is a solo game about fighting off waves of alien ships and researching the mother ship in order to beat the game. I have yet to beat the game, but it is a lot of fun. But I always feel like I’m getting close. I also really like that high numbers make some ships descend faster but are more useful to research or blow up ships. It’s a clever system and a pretty big little game.

6: Galaxy Trucker

I normally don’t like real time games but Galaxy Trucker is an exception. In Galaxy Trucker you build out your cargo ship as fast as you can. Then you sit back an watch it get blown up. Well, ideally not blown up, and ideally you pick up cargo along the way. You deal with asteroids, space pirates, and come across planets full of goods along the way. It might be too chaotic for some, but I really like it.

5: Battlestar Galactica

BSG (Battlestar Galactica) is a massive game of survival when you might have hidden traitors among you. The Cylons are aboard the ship and you might not even know you are one. This is a massive three hours deduction, survival, even a bit of social deduction game. You try and figure out who is a Cylon and if you can get them off the ship in time before they mess everything up. But that’s way easier said than done.

4: T.I.M.E Stories

TIME Stories is almost any setting. There is Ancient Egypt, a land of dragons, pirates, zombies taking over a town, an asylum, you name it. But the core conceit of the game is that you are launching out, sending your mind back in time from the future, to deal with these problems, where time is changing. The concept is amazing, and I have liked each adventure I’ve gone on. I wish it had more of a story running throughout, but the different missions all feel unique.

3: Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns

Rogue Angels isn’t even out yet, I have only played it on TableTop Simulator (TTS) but it is amazing. You can watch my play through of it here with the designer, Emil Larson. The game just works, it is a dungeon crawl style game in space. But it isn’t a dungeon crawl game where you just go in fight the monsters and leave. You make important decisions. And you upgrade your character as you go. There is so much I like about this game. When I get a physical copy, I suspect it’ll move up higher.

2: Clank! In! Space!

Clank! In! Space! is a deck building adventure game where you are breaking into a spaceship, trying to be as quiet as possible so you don’t Clank about. But to move faster, defeat more bad guys, and generally win the game, you will need to Clank. Plus there is a push your luck element where you want to get as far in as you can to get the best treasure. But the longer you are in the ship, the more clank and damage you can accrue.

1: XenoShyft: Onslaught

XenoShyft is a tower defense deck building game with some amazing cooperative elements to it. Mainly, I can buy a card and then give you that card if you need help. You only have two troops to defend your side of the base in your hand, I can help you get more. I can even drop in a paratrooper in the middle of fighting a wave of bugs. Add in that you always get money, that’s even better. I rarely defeat the waves of bugs, but it’s so much fun to try.

Final Thoughts

I own a fair number more Sci-Fi themed games that I need to try. Middara blends Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Nemesis is basically Aliens the board game. And I just realized that I missed Not Alone on the list, probably top 6-7. But I still think there are more fantasy games out there that look interesting.

Some that I don’t own that I really should try are the different Dune games. I own the one based on the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system which I need to carve out a weekend chunk of time to play.

What are your favorite board games with a Sci-Fi theme?

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If you want to join in on the live stream and see the games as I talk about them as well as comment on my choices, you can join on Wednesdays from now until November 17th. I stream over on Malts and Meeples on YouTube at 8 PM Central Time. And if you need to catch up on the list.

100 Through 91

Top 100 Board Games 90 – 81

90. Skulk Hollow

A fun and pretty simple and fast two player asymmetrical game. One person plays as foxes who are trying to take down the other players guardian. The guardian has it’s goal, to take out the foxes leader to some other objective. The foxes are trying to get onto the guardian and hit it, taking out all of it’s health locations and disabling abilities. This is all done through some pretty simple card draw that makes the game easy to play.

Buy On Miniature Market

89. Titan Race

This might be the first racing game that I ever got. It is a light and silly little one, which is what I look for in a filler. In this game you are racing across one board three times or three boards. You use special powers to stop your opponents, knock them off course, and get further ahead. The game play is fun too because you are drafting dice to figure out what your movement is. It’s a good game that can probably be played with all ages.

Not Available

88. King of Tokyo

A classic game at this point, King of Tokyo is about all those monsters you know the names of hitting each other to get into Tokyo. Granted none of the monsters are actually named right because of licensing costs. But this is a great game that uses the Yahtzee style mechanic of rolling dice, keeping, and then rolling up to twice more. You can win by knocking out the other monsters, the most fun way, or by points. This is a game I don’t always pull out, but when I do, it’s a good time.

Buy On Coolstuff Inc

87. Tokyo Highway

Keeping on the theme of Tokyo, we have Tokyo Highway. A game that is as much a piece of art as it is a game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a game there, but when you finish playing it looks amazing. In this game you build highways through Tokyo while going over and under other roads. The trick is you can only raise or lower your road by one each time, and can’t touch the table with your road. If you go over or under another road you get to put out cars, but that’s harder because you can’t touch the other roads or knock them over. A fun and beautiful dexterity game.

Buy on Miniature Market

86. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Not even the first deck builder on my list, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is one of the easier ones to teach. First there is the theme that makes it easier to get to the table, people know Harry Potter. And a lot of people love Harry Potter. So it’s something that people can jump into as they know the spells and characters you add to your deck. And the game grows and progresses the further you play into it. Even just playing the first book several times, it’s a fun game that is very accessible.

Buy on Amazon

85. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

This is the zombie survival game in the lines of The Walking Dead. Yes, you have to kill zombies in the game, but it’s about how you can work together as players while still trying to complete your own secret objective. That part of the game is good, but where it really shires is the Crossroads cards. These offer you challenging decisions as to if you rescue someone or not because that means another mouth to feed. I do house rule this one by drawing two Crossroads cards. Only one can happen, but it means that they happen more often.

Buy on Miniature Market

84. Silver

This game is tricky to explain, but not that hard to play. In the game you are drawing a card and deciding what to do with it, do you add it to your village or discard it for a power. The interesting bit is that you have a village of five in front of you but the cards are face down. At the beginning of each of the four rounds, you look at two of them. So you need to figure out ways to see your other cards, or maybe swap them blindly. And to get rid of cards completely so you have the lowest score. Good little take that type of game.

Buy on Amazon

83. Hues and Cues

There are a few party games on my list, but this one wasn’t there last year because I had yet to play it. It’s a game about trying to get people to guess a color. But you first give a one word clue and then a two word clue. As the person giving the clue, you get points for more people getting close or the right guess. And for the guessers you want to get close because that gives you points. Giving clues to guess colors is definitely different and feels unique for a party game.

Buy on Amazon

82. Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure Game

Clank! A Deck Building Adventure Game I own but I haven’t played my copy. I have played on Table Top Simulator on Steam and had a blast with it. It’s a great push your luck deck building game.

You delve into a dungeon to steal a dragon’s treasure. But as you go through the dungeon you make noise and clank. When the dragon awakens he draws from a bag that has your clank and others. If too much is drawn you die. But if you can get in and then get back out with the best treasure and most points, or the other players die, you can win the game. It’s light goofy and fun. And I really need to play Clank! Legacy.

Buy on Miniature Market

81. Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

This is an odd game, it is fairly abstract but challenging and fun. Gravwell, I’m not doing the full title, has you sucked into another dimension and trying to escape back home before the portal closes. All while there is a black hole you don’t want to get sucked into. You are also out of your normal fuel, it’s not a good day. So you play down different elements as your fuel.

And this is where the game gets odd because some fuel pulls you towards the closest ship, some push you away and some draw ships towards you. Plus, every player plays down an element at the same time and they activate in alphabetical order. So if you play a later letter, like P let’s say, that might move you a long way towards the closest ship, but will that be the right direction when you get to activate. Silly game with a great and different mechanic to it.

Buy On Miniature Market

The Next Ten

So there we have it, we’re 20 games in between the two weeks. And every time I do the list I come up with a game I want to play And I come up with a game I think was too low.

If you want to join in on the next 10 live, you can do that on Wednesday September 29th at 8 PM Central Time. And then all the rest of the Wednesday’s up through November 17th. That’s over on the Malts and Meeples YouTube Channel. Subscribe and click the notification bell so you know when I go live.

And let me know which of these 10 is your favorite and which one do you want to try?

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What Is Pop-Up GenCon?

On the same weekend as GenCon, FLGS across the country are going to be doing Pop-Up GenCon. This is a kind of like a mini GenCon, but much more limited than that, obviously. There are going to be games to demo and probably some special events that the different stores might put on. But it’s mainly a chance for the board game companies to put out some games to a larger audience.

You can find more details about it over on the GenCon website.

What Games Will Be There?

As GenCon says, it is subject to change. And with shipping, I fully expect that some games might not make it in time. But other games, they might show up that companies haven’t talked about yet because they aren’t sure they’ll make it, but let’s take a look at what is announced.

Dungeon Party

This is a fun, light looking game that uses dexterity to go through a bunch of dungeons. I know I saw this game, by Forbidden Games, when it was on Kickstarter because it was something different. You are tossing or flicking coins onto coasters to fight monsters and have a good time. A game that is definitely built for the bar or a really casual game night of relaxing and drinking.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

This is a roll and write style game, with a fun play of words on it. You are building out your own Dinosaur Island, kind of Jurassic Park style but with maybe fewer park goers getting eaten. This reminds me of the roll and write, Welcome to Dino World, but I think that this going to be a bit more complex as you build out your park. From Pandasaurus games and the roll and write version of their game Dinosaur Island.

Captured Moments

I won’t lie, I know nothing about this game. It’s based on Downton Abbey which is a show that I haven’t watched, nor one that really interests me. It seems like a set collection game, but honestly, like the show, not a game that interest me that much. It looks like a fairly simple game that would be a good gift for a fan of the show.

Taco Bell Party Pack Card Game

Why is this a thing, I don’t know. This is a game that has been out for a little bit, I think it was part of the Target July release, if I’m not mistaken. But it’s a game, like the Captured Moments game above that is for a big fan of Taco Bell. This isn’t a complex game, you play down cards to get fans of Taco Bell to your scoring pile and the person with the most points wins. That might be simplifying the game slightly, but it’s not one that interests me.

Gravwell 2nd Edition

This is a game that I do know something about, mainly because I have the first edition. This is a really fun game and pretty easy to play. You draft different elements to power up your ships engines as you try and escape a black hole and get back to your dimension. The trick is you don’t know how the elements will work. You play them out and they activate in alphabetical order for each player.

But some will pull you towards the nearest object, repulse you away, or draw other objects towards you. So there is some thought that goes into what you play. Q might push you away from the nearest object 10 spaces but it’s later in the alphabet so that might be towards the black hole. It’s a really fun game and once you get it down, it’s very easy to play.

Dungeon Decorators

From Slugfest Games which made Red Dragon Inn, this is going to be another lighter and sillier game. You are building out a dungeon with, as they say, some light euro mechanics to score points and have the best dungeon at the end of the game. It’s not really a theme that interests me, but Slugfest Games makes some really accessible games, so one that probably would work for a lot of people.

Godtear

This is going to be a skirmish game, one that I think was on Kickstarter. It looks like it’s minis heavy and while the minis seem pretty cool, I’m not sure this is the type of game for me. There are going to be two different factions, it looks like, at the Pop-Up GenCons, so that is cool. For me I look at this and go, do I need another game like that if I have Super Fantasy Brawl?

Disney Mickey and Friends Food Fight

I don’t have a Board Game Geek link for this one coming from The Op (Usaopoly). This, not shockingly, doesn’t seem like a theme for me, and I’m guessing is going to be a nice light kids game. The Op does a solid job on their games, so I don’t think it’ll be like a Hasbro kids game but should offer a little bit of game play to it.

Bayou Bash

This is described as a chaotic racing game. Which, I don’t mind a good racing game and racing games should have some chaos to them. I am also interested in this one because it does have some drafting. Drafting and the ability to pick some of what you want to do always interests me. It makes me feel like it’s less luck driven than something where you are just rolling dice. And it sounds like it’s less about winning but about how cool you can look in the race, which is an interesting concept.

What Am I Looking At?

Well, you can probably eliminate a few of them. I’m not interested in the Disney, Downton Abbey, or Taco Bell Games at all. Godtear, since it is a hex skirmish game is also not that high on my list. In fact, most of these are not that interesting to me, but I’m curious about Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write. It’s one that I considered backing on Kickstarter when it was there with Dinosaur World. I like a good roll and write game, and I think it’d be interesting to compared to Welcome to Dino World.

What games interest you? I hope that there’ll be more, and let me know about your Pop-Up GenCon experience or GenCon experience if you are going this year? I’ll be curious to hear about the events and if the Pop-Up ones are fun for people. Plus, I think since I am going to to the GameZenter, formerly Fantasy Flight Game Center, maybe we’ll see some Fantasy Flight Games there to demo.

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Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s

G and H’s

Gloom

This is a fun little story telling card game, and one of the earlier “new” games that I picked up after watching it played on Wil Wheaton’s Table Top show. What drew me to this game was how creative and morbid they were with everything, and how a game could have such a silly objective, such as killing of your family for the fewest points possible to get the win. What keeps this on my shelf, even though I haven’t played it in a few years, is that it’s just such a fun time when you do play it. You get into the morbid absurdity of it and collectively tell such a tragic but absurd story.

Status: Played

Gloomhaven (Forgotten Circles Exp and Jaws of the Lion)

Gloomhaven is my favorite game of all time, so clearly I’ve played it a lot, and I’ve beaten it and the Forgotten Circles expansion, I haven’t beaten Jaws of the Lion yet. What I love about Gloomhaven is just the large, sprawling story that it tells and the very Ameritrash feel, but also the Euro game sensibilities in the combat and combat cards come through, and no dice. Now, I like dice chucking, but I’ve found that I really like that tactical nature of the game play in Gloomhaven where it is much more buttoned down than a pure dice fest. This is a massive game with a massive rule book, but not that difficult when you get into it.

Gloomhaven and expansion Status: Played
Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion: To Be Played

Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

This is a game that I picked up in San Diego because I had a few hours to burn before seeing family and after I was out of my hotel, so of course I went to a game shop. This is one that I had seen played on Rodney Smith’s channel, Watch It Played, and that looks like it was a lot of fun. I’m glad I made the purchase as I’ve had fun with it, trying to time out things so that I can rocket forward by spending the right fuel as you try and get your spaceship to escape a black hole and get back to your own dimension. What makes this one fun is trying to read what the other players are going to be doing, you know half the cards they have, but what else might they have to power their ships, how fast will it go compared to yours will that move them closer or further from you. And I like how some fuels move you closer to the nearest object while others push you away or pull them all closer to you. It’s a clever idea that works well in a game.

Status: Played

The Grimm Masquerade

I almost missed this one, but you wouldn’t know that had I not said it. This game I like as a deduction/social deduction game. I think what works well is that it really is more deduction than anything else. In this game you are at a masquerade and you’re trying to guess what Grimm’s Fairly Tale characters everyone is. Now that should be obvious, Rumpelstiltskin and The Beast form Beauty and the Beast should be pretty obviously in why they are, but let’s say magic. What I really like about this game is the two cards you give or keep each turn. You draw one and you have the choice of giving it to someone or keeping it for yourself and they have an item on it that you might want, because if you collect enough of one, you can win, if it’s the right one for your character. The second card you do the opposite thing from the first one, so if I give it away, I have to keep the second card. But the downside is that you have a weakness and if you get enough cards of that type, you are out of the round and can’t get the rose which is worth a bunch of points. I like the push and pull of that as you have to consider, do I take something that’s just neutral for me because I know if I get another of a certain item I’ll be out? It’s just a really good and quick deduction game.

Status: Played

Hanabi

This is a weird game, in that you have a hand of cards and they don’t face you, so you can’t see your cards, but you can see everyone else’s cards. This is also a game about hold information in your head, not just for yourself but what clues other people have been given already about the cards in their hands. You’re trying to play down cards from 1 to 5 in different colors, but you are limited in how you can talk, and of course you can’t see your own cards. It’s a nice simple game, but one that has a lot going on when you really get down to it.

Status: Played

Hanamikoji

I was going to say that this probably my favorite game to play with two, but there is one that I like better, but it’s the best two player only game that I have. This game has you trying to win the favor of Geisha so that they will come to your restaurant, you do that by giving them gifts. But what works so well in this game is how you give the gifts, each player, per round, does four actions, put down two cards face down that won’t be used for gaining favor, one face down that will be used for gaining favor, giving your opponent the choice of 3 cards which they get one and you get two for gaining favor, or giving your opponent a choice between two sets of two cards for gaining favor. That’s it, and both of you can do those actions in any order, if you can figure out what your opponent might have, you can make them have some really hard choices as to what to take, but it’s always a bit of a risk. Great two player game.

Status: Played

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

This is Harry Potter in a deck building game, as you face off against the different bad guys from the books with the characters of Harry, Hermoine, Ron, and Neville. What is really interesting about this game is that as you start you’re playing through the first book, then they add more cards and of things from the second book and you get more, and then the third, fourth, and all the way up through the 7th. It’s basically a campaign game that takes you through the whole Harry Potter series Now that does mean that the first game is pretty simple but later ones are longer and more challenging, but you can do cooler and different things than before.

Status: Played (partially)

Hats

This was one of my most anticipated games from GenCon 2019 after seeing it played by Man vs Meeple. This is an interesting game with an Alice in Wonderland theme, but really it’s a unique card game. in this game your hand of cards are cards you’re playing onto the table in the middle of the game, the cards you take off the table are the ones that you use for scoring. And scoring is fun as well, because there are more suits than there are spots at the table, and the table might have brown in two different spots, not everything will be scored, so you need to push for some colors, sometimes, and then hold one or two back so you can play it down and that color will be scored. But a card on the Mad Hatters table can be replaced if someone plays the same color or a higher number over that card, so it’s a real balancing act and puzzle, great at two very thinky, fun at four, but much more random.

Status: Played

Hearts

Yes, I own a deck of cards. Hearts is a pretty fun trick taking card game. I don’t play it often, but I won’t say no to a game.

Status: Played

Heaven & Ale

This is a game that I talked about recently in a Point of Order post. It’s a euro game which normally isn’t my cup of tea, or pint of beer in this case. However, because of the beer theme, and a reviewer who I like their reviews and generally like their taste said it was one of their top games, and because it was deeply discounted for Black Friday, I grabbed it. This is a game that you can basically call a puzzle as you are putting out tiles, getting resources, trying to get the most victory points, I’m interested to try it when I can play with people in person again.

Status: To Be Played

Heroes of Terrinoth

There are some YouTube channels that you’ll see often on my posts, Rolling Solo is one of them. He highlighted this game a while back, and when I spotted it used at my FLGS, All Systems Go, I decided to grab it. In this game you are playing as heroes trying to defeat scenarios, which might be searching for something, going to different places and fighting monsters, and eventually dealing with a big boss. What I thought was interesting was how you had four abilities and you’d have to reset them at times, so it isn’t just about doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, you can upgrade those abilities, and how that lets you focus your character in a few different ways, just in the scenario itself.

Status: To Be Played

The Hobbit

I like Lord of the Rings a lot, so when The Hobbit game from Fantasy Flight was on sale, I decided to pick it up. This is a really interesting game as it’s almost semi-cooperative in nature. As a group you need to deal with a series of challenge points, and you can raise your stats to do that. But not one player will be able to deal with all of the challenges, so you need everyone to have raised their stats as well. To do this you are playing cards from your hand with numbers on them, the higher the number the further you’ll move in your group of travelers. But going the furthest doesn’t always mean you’ll get the best thing, but you also might not want to always get the best thing, because if someone is lagging behind too much in their stats, it’ll make it more likely that Smaug will move forward and everyone will lose the game. It’s a clever system that I enjoy.

Status: Played

Homebrewers

Have I mentioned that I like beer? Homebrewers is a game all about being a home brewer and in a home brew club where you are trying to brew the best beer to get points at Summerfest and Oktoberfest. You do this by getting ingredients, putting them on your beers, brewing those beers, and then each ingredient has some power of some sort, it might be you get $2, or you could move up another beer on how well you can brew it, it all depends on the ingredients that you have on the beer. So if you’re smart with how you do it, you can brew one beer to influence more or to make things easier. It’s a nice engine building game that gives you a lot of fun options and things you can do, and it also plays well at two players.

Status: Played

Hues and Cues

Final game for the letter H, Hues and Cues is a fun, new, party game from The Op, formerly USOpoloy. What I like about this game is that it’s a different kind of party game. In so many you are trying to make people laugh, or something like that by what you do or write, Hues and Cues challenges you to give good one word and then two word clues to get people as close as possible to the color you want. I like that you want people to guess right, but also for the players, guessing close works as well. But you can’t just say something like Sky Blue, as that tells you that the color is some shade of blue, but your one word clue could be sky, so what do people consider sky, or maybe you give a clue that has people going in the wrong way, you then can give another clue to get people closer again. It also works pretty well via Zoom, just everyone should be looking at a monitor to get the colors as close as possible to each other.

Status: Played

What’s your favorite game from the G’s and H’s? Is there one that stands out as one that you’d want to try or one that I should try that I don’t have in this letter range?

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100 to 91

90 to 81

80 to 71

70 to 61

Plus a few notes on how I’ve put together the list:

• These are my favorite, you want what people consider best, see the Board Game Geek Top 100
• If a game you love isn’t on the list, it might be be coming, I might not have played it, and if I have, it’s 101
• If a game looks cool, I have links to buy it from CoolStuffInc or Amazon, or you can grab most at your FLGS
• There are a few games, Destiny 2 Player versus regular Destiny where if they are basically the same thing, I only do one of them

60. Hanabi

Hanabi is an interesting game, because it’s a twist on a fairly simple board game concept. There are a lot of games where you are trying to put out numbers in ascending order, in this case 1 through 5. In this one, you can’t see your cards, so you have a hand of cards and they are all facing away from you. So you can give clues to your fellow players, such as what cards in their hand are a given color or what cards in their hand are a given number, but you can’t give both. And you have a limited number of clues but you can get more, you just have to discard a card to get one back. The game is an interesting push and pull of how much you know and how much you don’t. It is also a game that works well at all player counts, so that is fun as well. Cool concept, good execution and just good fun.

Last Year: 44

59. Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

We go from one kind of tricky game to wrap your head around to another with Gravwell. In this game you are trying to escape from a black hole and get to a wormhole before it closes. To do that, you are racing against your fellow players using whatever you can find as fuel to power your ship. Now, I make that sound fairly thematic, it is quite abstract. But what makes this game is the playing of fuels, they are all elements, so you go in alphabetical order of the element as everyone plays their fuel for the round all at once. And most of the fuel, it causes you to go towards the nearest object, whether that is in front of or behind you. There are some fuels that repel you from the nearest object and others that draw the other ships towards you, so it’s a guessing game of what you think other people might have and how quickly they might be going, because maybe the person behind you will go fast and get too close so if you go towards the object you’ll get pulled towards them, or maybe they want to go a ways and will go with one later in the alphabet, so you’ll want to be pulled by the person in front of you. It’s really a game about reading and guessing what your opponents will do.

Last Year: 66

58. Photosynthesis

This is a mean game about growing trees. Which, that sounds kind of odd, but it’s mean because you can block your opponents trees from getting sunlight. Now, that doesn’t seem all that mean, except that is how you get your action points to grow trees, harvest trees for points, and plant more trees. So if the sun is positioned right and your tree is tall enough, you can cast a shadow on shorter or like height trees. It’s an interesting thing as you plan out where the trees are going to go so you’re not only going to be set-up for your next turn but will be set-up for futures ones as well. And you have to ask, is it worth it to maybe have a really bad turn if you can set-up a great turn down the line. You can plan this because the sun moves each turn around the board, and you have a certain number of times around the board for the game, so you know where it’s going to be all of the following turns as you plan. And I say that this game is mean, it’s more that it can be mean, most of the time you aren’t thinking about blocking as much as you are planning out your turn.

Last Year: 28

57. Five Tribes

A gateway style game that has just a bit more going on, this is also a point salad game as well. By that I mean that everything gives you points. You place a camel, you’ll get points for that tile, there’s a palm tree or a palace on it, points, viziers, points, collections of spices, points, and so on and so forth. This game uses a fun mancala style meeple movement. Whatever meeple color you decide to end up with is what you end up doing, it can be shopping, buying a Djinn, or a few more options such as just getting money. I like this game because you can set-up some great turns, and in two player, you could even find a couple of great turns in a row if you wanted or you could move stuff to set-up yourself for a good turn. You can do this because turn order is bid upon. If you find a great turn, you can bid higher for it, and while it’d have to be a really great turn to bid too high, you can go for something or block someone from getting something if you see what they are after. This game works well because you can score points in so many ways, so most of the time you can focus in on one or two of them as well, so someone learning the game doesn’t have to have a whole grasp on the strategy for everything. And for gamers, it feels like there is more going on to be paid attention to than your standard gateway game.

Last Year: 47

56. The Lord of the Rings

One of the earlier cooperative games, this game is all about getting the Fellowship to Mordor and tossing the ring into the fire. But you’re doing this by playing through the whole trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. You get gifts and cards along the way as you advance all while trying to keep Sauron’s eye off of you. There are a lot of boards in this game as you play out cards to advance upon different tracks and play through different things, it might be the mines of Moria or Helms Deep, but you are playing through the story and you can potentially get stuff along the way such as at Rivendell or from Galadriel. The game is really hard as you push your way through all of the story and the different maps. You need to balance card use so that you can make it down the main path, but some of the other paths do offer good things as well and you want to try and do them also. Overall, a fun and hard cooperative game that is really expensive in that link, but there’s a new printing coming out soon, so wait for that.

Last Year: 85

55. Small World

I’ve talked about Small World Underground already, this is just basic Small World and I like it better. I think that the game, while being slightly simpler, is easier to play and grasp onto and since I have an expansion for that, it adds in some additional fun that way as well. This game is all about rushing in with one group of fantasy creatures, beating up and getting beat up, going into decline, picking a new group of fantasy creatures, and doing it all over again. I always call this Risk but fun, and that’s because Risk can gang up and knock one person out quickly, whereas in this game, you can always come back in again so you’re never truly out of the game. And the game plays faster as well in comparison to Risk. This game works because it doesn’t take itself seriously, so you get your fun combos and even when you get beat down, who knows, maybe the flying halflings will come in and save the day for you.

Last Year: 24

54. Cat Cafe

An interesting roll and write, this one is all about attracting the most cats to you in the cat cafe. You do this carefully curating a creative collection of cat toys, beds, and food. They all score in different ways, the toy mouse will score more points for the largest group of them that you have, while the cat bed wants different things around it on all sides to score you more points. Plus, you’re also working on filling up cat trees so that they score you the most possible points for having them completed. The end game is trigger when one person completes their third cat tree. What works nicely in this game is that everyone is doing things at the same time. You draft dice, and then you, using the final dice, place something on a cat tree at the level of the number on either your drafted dice or the group die, and then an item with the other one. You have ways to adjust the numbers which works well, and you can score the cats at times as well to get you more points in game. Overall, a fun and cute roll and write that has a fair amount going on all things considered.

Last Year: 54

53. Titan Race

If you’ve ever wanted to race on the back of monsters this is the game for you. A light dice drafting, take that, monster racing game, this is all about completing three laps or the grand circuit of three maps, faster than anyone else. But while you’re doing that you’re trying to stay out of lava on some maps, make a sweet jump to move faster on other maps, or sliding across ice. All of this while jostling for position. You roll dice for the number of players and then players take turns drafting dice and making their move, and so the last player doesn’t get stuck with one die, come their turn, they pick them all up and roll them again. This game is somewhat random because of the dice rolling, but you can plan as bumping into someone deals them damage, and pushes them further forward, but might be what you need to push them into lava which will knock them out for a round, which might get you past them. The game is silly fun and a very good time for a light racing style game.

Last Year: 48

52. Potion Explosion

People are pretty familiar with app games where you try and get like colors touching, and if they do, they disappear, and if those make a like match, they disappear and so on and so forth. Potion Explosion is like that with marbles. In this game you are trying to complete potions, use their powers, and score points from them. You do this by collecting ingredients. You pull out one marble, if the marbles that hit are the same color, you get all of those color that are touching, and if that causes more to hit, you do it again. Then you can store a few ingredients for later, but you’re mainly trying to put them into potions and get as many of those done as possible. The game is nice because it has a great toy affect. It also works well because as you get more potions done, you can really start to combo stuff using the powers of the potions to have big turns. This is a game that’ll attract people to it because of how it looks on the table, and it’s basically gateway level.

Last Year: Not Ranked

51. Skulk Hollow

Generally I don’t have a ton of two player games. My wife and I do play a few two player games sometimes, but this one caught my eye when it was on Kickstarter. The company is one that I am familiar with and they always make beautiful projects, and this one seems like an interesting balance of strategy and cuteness on the board. In this game one person takes on the foxes of the forest who have built up a settlement in this town. Another is an ancient guardian that has awoken. The guardians are all trying to do something different to win the game it might just be take out a lot of foxes, or it could be placing tentacles on the board or something like that. The foxes on the other hand are all about getting to the guardian, hopping on it, and chopping away at their health, doing that can take out different actions for the guardian. The game has a good and different feel as you play it because of how the guardians change and how the different leaders can affect play for the fox player as well. It’s one that I think works well for people because it is pretty simple and it offers some good choices with how the game play works.

Last Year: Not Ranked

What’s your favorite from this section? Any that stand out, any based off of my taste that you think I should try or you think will be higher on the list?

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10 – Potion Explosion
Now, Potion Explosion is not that unique in terms of video games, but for a mechanic in a board game it has something very cool. You are taking/collecting marbles to mix together in your potion. That piece is pretty standard set collection fare that you see in a lot of games, but it has a mechanic where, because you are pulling marbles from a tray and then more marbles drop in, that if you pull a marble and then like colored marbles hit, you take those marbles, and if more like colored marbles hit, you can take those, so you can set-up a big chain reaction of marbles to use on your potions. It’s a simple mechanic to add into the game, but they execute it well with the tray that holds the marbles and allows them to roll. There’s also more strategy than it feels like there would be, but is still a simple game to teach.

9 – Captain Sonar
This one is interesting to have on the list, because I don’t know that it has a single completely unique mechanic, but the combination of trying to figure out hidden movement, breaking down and repairing systems, and navigating all at the same time, and getting systems loaded, there’s just a lot going on in this hectic game. But they work together extremely well. You get that pressure of trying to hunt down the enemy sub and figure out where they are and what they are up to. And if things go poorly and you need to resurface, all of a sudden they have a chance to find you. This game is also interesting because it’s a big group game but doesn’t have a party game feel.

8 – Dice Forge
I believe that there are a couple other games that have done this, but none, in my opinion, as successfully as Dice Forge, and that is dice customization. In this game, which is basically just a seeing who can get the most victory points over a few rounds, you are swapping out the faces on your dice so that you can get more of several different resources, whether it’s to purchase more and better cards that give you points, or if it’s money that you can spend to get more points, or maybe even just more points. The game gives you a number of strategies for it. But the most fun part is popping off the side of a die and replacing it with something better which really then allows you to customize your strategy going forward.

7 – Hats
Hats is an interesting one to put on the list because it’s just a very small card game and all you’re doing in it is collecting hats in front of you and trying to keep what you want for scoring on the table at the Madd Hatter’s tea party. But how it works is interesting because the cards you get for scoring are from the table. So if you aren’t careful, you could set it up that a color of hat you’ve been collecting might not be able to be scored anymore. So it’s a give and take of collecting a variety of hats but also keeping a lot of scoring options open. It can be pretty thinky at two players. Just the play of the table and how you get cards in front of you feels different and unique to me. So many games you use your own hand for scoring, but in Hats, what you have in your hand, you might not use for scoring at all.

6 – Photosynthesis
First the theme is quite unique, growing trees is not that common a theme, but it has one really interesting and cool mechanic and that’s the sun. In this game the sun rotates around the board and there are games that do that with the moon as well, but the sun rotating can determine if you’re tree is going to get any sunlight and give you points to grow your trees more so and eventually remove your biggest tree which will get you points. But the game is played a certain number of rotations of the sun, and there are a number of spots it can be, but the taller the tree is, the more shade it casts, so it’s a balancing act of blocking your opponents trees at times while getting your own to get the sun in a lot of situations or consistently getting energy to use from the sunlight.

5 – Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
Not the most unique mechanic anymore, because they’ve come out with two more Crossroads games, though only one of them has been well received. But Dead of Winter is a zombie survival game where you have a main objective, personal objectives, and possibly a traitor, but what makes it unique is that there are Crossroads cards. These cards will only get triggered in certain situations, maybe if you take a certain action or go to a certain place or have a certain character. But that’ll immediately interrupt your turn and you’ll be given a little bit of story and then have to make a decision, it can be something that might help the colony, but most of the time it isn’t and you’ll have to choose between a couple of bad options. It’s a fun mechanic that adds more theme into the game and makes a pretty tough game considerably harder.

4 – Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension
You’ve been sucked through a wormhole and are being pulled into a black hole, so you really need to get out of the 9th Dimension. Fortunately you have a bunch of random elements on the ship that you can use for fuel, unfortunately you’re not sure how well they’ll work. What makes this unique is that the elements do different things, they’re all going to move someone, but some might move you towards the nearest ship, some might push you away, or some might pull ships towards you. And when your ship fires off is completely dependent upon the element that you’re using. The elements fire in alphabetical order, so you might have a card that’ll move you a long ways but it’s later in the alphabet, so you need to use that when you’re confident that it’ll pull you towards a ship that’s ahead of you, and not the wrong way. It’s a simple mechanic but one that works well and causes a lot of tough decisions to be made.

3 – Cartographers
This flip and write does a fair number of things that other flip or roll and write games have done before, or even other board games with the scoring set-up. And combined those by themselves are pretty unique, but there’s one very unique thing that this game does. It causes you to pass your sheet and someone else will write on it. As you are creating your map, monsters might show up, and when they do, you pass your sheet either left or right and that other player puts the monster in the least useful spot possible. And you get negative points if you can’t completely the map around the monsters. Just that screwing over of your fellow players is very interesting and normally roll and writes can be a bit solitaire so this adds in some more interactions.

2 – Xenoshyft: Onslaught
So, in the introduction I gave an example of how a lot of deck building games aren’t that unique. I think that Xenoshyft: Onslaught does something unique in how you can use the cards. In most deck building games, even cooperative ones like Aeon’s End, there are certain steps that you have to do to help the other players at the table. In Xenoshyft, however, you can simply pass them a card while you are setting up your defenses. This means that the person in charge of the armory who can get weapons cheaper can pass the medic a weapon, or maybe someone has six troops in their hand, they can pass an extra to another player to add to their line of troops. Compared to other cooperative deck building games, and actually many cooperative games in general, this one allows you to cooperate and collaborate more on what you are doing.

1 – Betrayal at House on the Hill
Now, this one I’m putting here because of the two halves on the game. There are other games that have multiple distinct parts, Galaxy Trucker for example, but with Betrayal at House on the Hill, you go from a tense cooperative game of exploring a house, mainly tense because you don’t want someone to get too much stuff or too powerful, to a game where it is one versus all as someone becomes the traitor. It does a good job, in my opinion of balancing the tension. There’s less to say on this one, because the mechanic is pretty simple, find enough omens, have a bad enough roll and bad things will happen.

Now, I’m sure I’m missing some that I’ve played and many that I haven’t played that could be unique or do a twist on some more common mechanic. What are some of your favorite games with unique mechanics?

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Kind of like before with fantasy, we’re not going to count space games, so something about going to the moon and the space race, not Sci-Fi. We’re also not going to just limit it to games set in space, there’s way more to Sci-Fi than that. And finally, it’s not going to be Sci-Fi adjacent games, Smash Up has aliens and robots, two common Sci-Fi things, but Smash Up is not a Sci-Fi games.

10 – Risk Legacy
Now, Risk is not a Sci-Fi game, but Risk Legacy is. You’re on a planet that has been terraformed to look like Earth for some reason, and of course you are all fighting over it. You have mechs and missions and it’s basically an area control game, but so much better than basic Risk. Combat is still the same, roll dice, try and take over other territories, however, you have ways to get victory points and when someone has three, the game ends and they are the winner. So a game of Risk Legacy is way shorter, plus, you unlock cool things as the game goes along and some crazy things that really change up the game. It’s a definitely blast to play and you have a usable, though odd, board afterwards, so it isn’t just for the fifteen or so games in the Legacy campaign that you can play.

9 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
While there are other Sci-Fi dungeon crawlers out there, this is my favorite of them. It has a theme that I love, Star Wars, and it can be played either one versus many with the one player being the DM who is running the empire, or you can play through a campaign using an app where everyone is able to play a rebel and team up together that way. So the game offers flexibility and it offers a lot of fun dice chucking. Now, you don’t get to play all the famous characters, Luke or Darth Vader might show up in the story, but you don’t get to play as them. Instead you’re playing around the main Star Wars story with the campaign in the app. That’s fun as well as you get to kind of flesh out the world in game form. This isn’t my highest Star Wars game on the list, though.

8 – Cry Havoc
This is a very thinky and interesting Sci-Fi game that borrows from Avatar. In this game there are up to four different factions who are fighting for control of crystals on a planet. The Trogs, Humans, and Mechs are all going to be out there and fighting fairly often, whereas the Pilgrims are going to just collecting as many crystals as they can. This game has some interesting card play where you can use the symbols on the cards for your actions, such as moving, recruiting, and building. But at the same time, you need those for when you get into combat, and the combat is unique as well. It has a track of majority, capture, kill. And whomever wins the majority gets the territory, and to do that, you’re just putting your troops from the area onto the various sections. Then you can use cards to move them around an manipulate them. After that, it’s pretty simple, whomever has majority gets the area, then you can capture someone if you played anyone there, limiting your opponents troop totals, and then you can kill off troops so they don’t go back on the board. It’s a very different sort of area control game, but one that works out well.

7 – Gravwell
The closest thing to just being a space game on the list. This one is also the simplest game on the list. You and the other players have had your space ships sucked into a wormhole which is pulling you into a black hole. All you want to do it get back out through the wormhole before it closes. But you’re out of fuel, thankfully you have pure elements on your ship and you can toss those in to try and fly. What is fun is that some elements move you towards the nearest ship (forwards or backwards), or push you away from the nearest ship, or draw ships nearer to you. So while you are trying to escape, you are also worried about what other people are going to be be playing, does my element come after their element alphabetically, if so will they move ahead of me so I can then move ahead of them, or will it pull me backwards, the game is simple, fast, and fun.

6 – Not Alone
So, Star Wars: Imperial Assault was a one versus all game that can be completely cooperative, this game is just a one versus all. In traditional Sci-Fi horror fashion, you’ve crash landed on a planet and you are waiting for a search and rescue party to come get you, and things are alright on the ship, but you need to go out and get supplies, and when you do, you find that you’re not alone on the planet and what’s there wants to take you out. So most of the people are playing the crew of the ship and one person is the monster/planet. The players are planning out where they are going, and they can discuss as much as they want, split up however they want, or discuss as little as they want, but the monster player has to be able to hear it all. It makes it a fun little cat and mouse game as they try and do things to get the ship there faster. And the monster has powers that they can play to mess with things, and then they go to a location, based off of the cards played and what they’ve heard and if they catch crew there or kill crew, they get closer to their winning goal of taking out all of the crew. It’s a fun game and for a small box game it plays pretty fast and simple.

5 – Star Wars: Rebellion
Second and last Star Wars game on the list, Rebellion is what they call on the Dice Tower, and I agree with, Star Wars in a box. You get to play the cat and mouse game of the original trilogy of the empire searching for the rebels hidden base and the rebels trying to sabotage the empire to the point where they can take it down. You get all the classic characters for your leaders, you get to have ground and space battles, overall, the game is just a lot of fun. Now, it’s a two player only game (technically 4 but that’s just splitting up what two players do), and it’s a long one, probably about three hours, unless the empire gets lucky. There’s still dice chucking in combat, so it can be a bit lucky, but overall, it’s a really fun game and a good amount of strategy in the game.

4 – Lords of Hellas
Probably the oddest one on the list, because technically it’s built around ancient Greece and it’s mythology. But there are robots and you are playing in this future cyber punk sort of setting. This is one where the Sci-Fi theme comes through less than some others, but I really like the game. Five players it’s a bit long but that was also a learning game. What makes this game really good in my opinion is that you have so many ways you can win. You can take over two complete regions, you can hold five regions with temples, defeat 3 monsters, or hold a completed statue at the end of three rounds. The game does so many clever things and you feel like you’re going to do one strategy, and then depending on how it goes, you might change that up mid game and basically everyone in our game did that and all of us were at points in time a turn or two away from winning. A really fun game, complex to learn but pretty simple to play.

3 – Clank! In! Space!
This is the tongue in cheek Sci-Fi game, which had to show up on the list at some point in in time. There’s so much Sci-Fi out there, that it’s hard not to make a goof on it at some points. That said, Clank! In! Space! is a great game as you are racing against your opponents into Lord Eradikus’s ship in hopes to steal the best treasure and get out. But sometimes you’re going to make noise, and if you do, you might cause Eradikus to start moving and drawing out cubes (known as clank) and get closer to finding you and taking you out. So how much do you push your luck? Plus, the cards you use are funny and the push your luck and deck building combination of the game works really well. Definitely a fun one, and if you want a fantasy theme instead, just go with Clank or Clank Legacy, which I talked about yesterday.

2 – T.I.M.E. Stories
I said this almost made my fantasy list, the issue was that only one scenario was that fantasy focused. The whole game has a heavy Sci-Fi theme to it. You are part of a time cop team, basically, policing the timeline to stop evil organizations from messing things up for their own gain. Each scenario is different, you might be in ancient Egypt, jump to a timeline where there is magic and dragons, go to a Victorian Asylum, or any other location you can imagine. You go on runs hoping to be able to solve the case and puzzles quickly, but you’ll probably have to go again and again and then hopefully you’ll get it. It’s a lot of fun, you have a good variety to the things that you can do each time, and while sometimes you might need to fight more, that’s probably going to be focus of that case not of all of them. I really enjoy it for the escape room puzzle type feel for it, and the story that they have throughout that tie things together, but also the story of each pack.

1 – XenoShyft: Onslaught
Finally, my favorite Sci-Fi game, and it’s all about fighting bugs. Starship Troopers is a fun and funny movie. While XenoShyft takes itself more seriously, you’re fighting bugs on an alien planet, so I don’t feel like it’s very that serious. This is a cooperative tower defense deck building game. Yeah, there’s a bunch going on in it, and I haven’t even gotten to the cool part. You face off against wave after wave of bugs hoping to keep them from hitting your base by deploying troops, giving them weapons and armor, healing them, whatever you need to do to defend your part of the base. And everyone has their own part. However, if you have a grenade, you can throw it to someone else’s part of the base and use it there, if someone else doesn’t have enough weapons or even troops, you can send some their way, you won’t get them back, but you can send them. You can even drop in paratroopers for someone else. So there’s such a good puzzle aspect and cooperative aspect to the game, it makes it work really well and is a ton of fun.

So in my top 100, that got me about down to #61. That seems like it might be a ways down, but I’ve played around 300 games, so 60 is top 20% of games I’ve played. Now, I’m sure there are a whole lot more Sci-Fi games that I should checkout, but what are some of your favorites from my list? Are there any you want to check out now? What should I checkout?

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These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

70 – Root
Root is probably one of the trickiest games to teach on the list. Each player is a different faction of woodland creatures fighting for dominance, unless you’re the Vagabond. The trick is that each faction plays differently so that the cats are just looking to increase their dominance. The Aerie is regimented and looking to take back from the cats. The other woodland creatures are trying to create a ground swell movement, and the vagabond is bouncing around trying to build things. So the teach for this game is long, but the game play has been worth it. I loved playing as the Aerie, creating this machine of actions that I was able to take and almost able to win because of it. It’s not a fast game, but definitely one that has a unique flavor to it, as it looks cute, but has some war game feeling to it.

69 – Scattergories
First of two party games back to back here, Scattergories has been around for a long time. In it, you have a list of prompts and a letter, you are trying to come up with something for each prompt that starts with that letter, and you score points if you come up with a unique one. So like some other party games where you are trying not to match, you have to determine do you go unique hoping that other people will put down the normal one, or do you think everyone else is going unique, so you’re safe to put down the normal word. For example, a “Boy’s Name” that starts with “B”. “Bob” is a very easy answer, but do you do “Bertrand” because it’s unique. It’s a fun game where you technically can play through something like 15 different lists, but whenever we play, we go through a few and then move onto the next game, with the random letter, it always keeps it feeling fresh and there are some good laughs.

68 – Wits & Wagers
I like this one a bit better than Scattergories because it’s almost more silly and easier to play, and it’s only numbers. In this party game you are all writing down what you guess a certain number will be, such as the number of quarters in the worlds largest quarter collection. Everyone puts down an answer, you arrange them on a board, and then you have a chance to bet on which one you think is right. The closer you are to the middle number, the less return you get, but how well do you trust your friends to have guessed close to it, without going over. At the end of several rounds, the person with the most money wins. Whereas Scattergories has a problem that someone might not know anything about a certain prompt, anyone can write down a number and then, you bet on someone else’s number. When we play, I normally know the most about sports, so people will tend to bet on my answer and sometimes they still get points for it, if I don’t go over. So it’s a good balance of trivia, but also making it so you still have a chance even if you don’t know.

67 – Dice Throne: Season Two Vampire Lord v Seraph
More Dice Throne. Because it’s split up just into two characters that you can play, it’s lower on the list. Eventually you’d get tired of the two characters. But this is, again, a fun yahtzee style battling game where you are trying to out last your opponent and do as much damage as you can. Both the Vampire Lord and the Seraph are fun to play as, and they play different. It’s cool how each character has their own deck of cards that you can improve the character with, and their own dice, so you feel like your character is different. And the characters do different things, put on different effects, so they are really unique. There are a lot of characters out there, but they all feel different from what I’ve played. Possibly more on Dice Throne coming later.

66 – Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension
You are the captain of a spaceship and you’ve made a terrible mistake. You ended up in the 9th Dimension, completely skipping over a lot of the other ones, and now you need to get back out before the singularity closes and you’re stuck there forever. And to make matters worse, you’ve run out of fuel. Thankfully, you have a fully stocked laboratory, so you just start dumping different elements into the engine to get moving. Gravwell is a very puzzly game where you are drafting different fuels, but the name hints at this, you are often affected by gravity. Some of the fuels will always move you towards the nearest ship, which might be further away from escaping, or you can repulse away, or you can pull other ships to you. So you have to figure out ways to slingshot yourself forward and not accidentally go a long ways backwards. The game is a bit tricky to wrap your head around, but once you do, it’s a fun puzzle to solve with great moments of launching forward, and hilarious moments of accidentally going backwards.

65 – Small World Underground
The world of (s)laughter has gone underground, and now you’re battling for control there. This game plays very similarly to regular Small World, but adds in a few new things. There aren’t lakes, but there are still impassible areas. And there are now monuments or ruins that you can find that will affect your team in some way. This adds even a bit more randomness into a silly random game of area control. In Small World Underground, you take various races and powers that are combined together, and make them fight against each other to get you points, and then you swap for a new one and try again and repeat the process for a number of rounds, and the most points (coins) wins. It’s a game with a lot of fighting, but it’s a silly game, so people don’t tend to get picked on too much and if you are picked on, you can get them with your next race and power combo. The base game of this is a Risk killer for me, and this one also falls into that category as well.

64 – Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City
This is like Splendor, but with more theme, and dice, but no poker chips. In it, you’re trying to build up the best city that you can, getting some great attractions set-up. First person to get all different attractions built wins. But you’re setting up a tableau of cards that get triggered on dice rolls to get you more money to buy more cards. You can hope for a number or two to get rolled often, but if they don’t, you won’t do well. Or you can diversify and that can give you consistent money, but you might never get multiple large pay days in a row. The game is pretty simple, the trickiest part is the amount of text on the cards and remembering what everything does. But once you’ve played a couple of times, you come to realize that the cards mainly do the same thing, and you can play the game really quickly. It’s a fun little tableau engine building that gives you lots of fun options as you play.

63 – Illimat
The Decemberists made a trick taking game, and this is it. The look of the game is a little bit odd, but it’s fun game as you play cards down into different fields for different seasons and then try and manipulate the seasons so that you can get the cards that you want for scoring, but avoid getting cards from the seasons that give negative scoring. Plus there are tarot style cards that can influence how scoring or how the seasons work to add twists to the game as you clear out fields and then replant them. The game generally works on getting sets of matching cards and harvesting them. I got to play this a few times at GenCon, and it’s a good game. The mechanics work well, the fact that the board is part of the game is cool. The clothe playmat aesthetically looks nice, but is only okay in practice, and the weird little bronze pieces are weird. I don’t have many trick taking games on the list, but this is one that I definitely enjoyed and would gladly play again.

62 – Parade
Alice in Wonderland is a fun theme for a game. This game plasters it on and calls it good, and it works. In this game you are trying to get the fewest points by playing down cards that are various colors and numbers, this determines what cards from the parade, line-up, of cards that you’re going to have to take. The trick to the game is that cards are worth their face value unless you have the most of that color, then all those cards are only worth a single point. So you have to balance what you have versus what is out there, and generally, you’re trying to take as little as possible. Parade is a fun little abstract game that is easy to teach and fast to play. Generally, you sit down and you play two or three games in my experience and once that’s done, you can hop into a bigger game. This can be hard to find though, as it seems to go in and out of print fairly quickly.

61 – Tsuro
This is technically a party strategy game, so probably my third or fourth group light style game. In Tsuro, you are flying your dragon stones, not to be confused with Dragon Balls which are completely unrelated, around paths trying to be the last dragon on a path. To do this, you are playing down a tile from your hand trying to stay on the board and not run into someone else. However, there are up to 7 other players doing that as well, and soon the board becomes cramped and you hope that someone else puts their fate in your hands, because you’ll be playing a tile that will cause both of you to move, and you’re also hoping that you have the right tile to keep yourself alive and not just collide with them an eliminate both of you. Tsuro is another one of those games that you’ll play a couple of times in a sitting because it goes very quickly.

We’re done with another ten games and we’re reaching the midway point, so that means were getting close to actually good games. No, I like all of these games a lot this far down on the list and there are games outside of the top 100 that I really enjoy as well. Thanks for checking out my list, and let me know which games you enjoy or what games look interesting and you want to try out.

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But while I was there, I got to play a few games that I hadn’t played before, and accidentally came home from my trip with two games. The first two that I played were Lucidity and Fae. I’ll write TableTopTakes on those later, but the one that I played by myself thus far (though I’m hoping to play this weekend), is Gravwell.

In Gravwell, you and your opponents are being sucked through a worm hole and you really want to escape it and get back to your home. So you are playing cards each turn that have a letter(s) and a number on them. The letters are generally elements from the periodic table, but that isn’t all that important. The important thing is that as you all pick cards and play them face down in front of you, the earlier letters in the alphabet go sooner and later letters mean you’ll go later in the round. Then the numbers on the card tell you how far you can move. But there’s one last piece of information on the card, and that is how you move.

This deserves it’s own paragraph because it’s the key part of the game. There are three different colored cards. The different colors mean different actions on the card. The most common means that you are moving towards the nearest ship. The other two either pull the ships towards you or repel the ships. This is where the game really takes off (all puns intended), as sometimes the ship that is closest to you is going to be behind you. So, do you pick a earlier letter card and either hope that they are faster than you and get a head of you or will you have to move towards them. As you would guess, the earlier letters don’t move you as far, and the later letters tend to move your further. Those that repel you from another ship or draw them to you aren’t early in the alphabet, but aren’t always extremely late.

To add in to this, you aren’t getting a random hand of cards in the game. At least not fully. The person who is furthest from escaping after round one, gets to select a pile of cards first. Now, with this, you don’t have perfect information. You know the top card of a pile of 6 cards in a two player game, and in higher player count games, you have multiple piles, I believe for three players it is 9 piles of two cards each. So in that case, you know half of the cards that you are going to be getting. But so do your opponents. So you can formulate a bit of a plan, but even if you don’t have perfect information on the cards.

The game lasts 6 rounds, so the game moves along pretty quickly. Each round consists of playing six cards but everyone is playing cards at the same time. And most of the time you have a pretty obvious choice of what you want to play. There are a couple of other things that add to the complexity of the game, or that you need to consider. The first is that there are a few derelict ships floating around as well. That actually is really  helpful, because those ships influence which is the closest ship to you. So instead of an opponent dragging you back, if they are closer, they can launch you further ahead. The other is that sometimes you think you’ll have a bead on what other players are doing, then they will do something completely different and you’ll be in a situation where you’d be going backwards ten spaces. That would suck, however, once per round you can play a card that says emergency stop. That means the card that you played is completely cancelled and you don’t go anywhere that turn.

That’s literally the whole game and probably enough of the rules that you could make your own made up copy of it. What I appreciate about this game is that it plays quickly while having some level of strategy. It isn’t a very complex game, but you do have to plan out your turns, you have to get that repel when you’re looking to win the game, and you’re always trying to guess what other players are going to be playing. There’s enough going on, and while there isn’t a take that aspect to the game where you can mess over someone else’s plans intentionally, unless you remember their cards, everyone is always involved in the game.

The production quality of this game is nice and it’s one that you can play with almost anyone. There aren’t many pieces and the concept is simple enough that I think you could even play this with younger children. They  might not fully understand the strategies for it, but it’s simple enough that they could probably start to learn it and figure it out over time. It’s a good game for that lighter weight strategy game and it really is fun because you are hoping that no one will mess up your plan with the card that you are playing.

Overall Grade: B+

Gamer Grade: C

Casual Grade: B+

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